


with the turn of the earth

by r0sie_p0sies



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friends to Lovers, Gen, I want to punch Albert Maverick in the face, I'm not even sure I'll get there to be honest but that's the goal, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mentions of Murder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Super super super slow burn, this sounds really sad but this is a story about healing, very very slow falling in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 16:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11317023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r0sie_p0sies/pseuds/r0sie_p0sies
Summary: Barnaby runs away; Kotetsu finds him. The past is a circle that turns and turns.(Barnaby meets Kotetsu when they are both a lot younger, but that doesn't make the past any easier to sort out.)





	with the turn of the earth

**Author's Note:**

> (In this story, the age difference between Kotetsu and Barnaby is 4 years (just because otherwise none of this would make sense). I've had the idea for this story stuck in my head for like a few years and I've finally decided to write it. I wish I could promise a regular update schedule, but I'm working on this along with a few other things, so I'll pretty much just update whenever I can. Each chapter will have four parts. I'm pretty excited about this!)

1

The heavens seem to open up right as Barnaby realizes that he is lost. It starts to rain with a loud crack of thunder and a burst of lightning that follows, setting the grey sky on fire for just a moment—Fire, fire, like the fire that swallowed his parents, that ate up the face of the man who killed them, that devoured his home and left only ashes in its wake. The rain pours down in sheets and runs in rivers through the street. Barnaby shivers and draws a hand across his face with a tiny sob.

Why is he running? He is afraid. He doesn’t know why. Is he running from somebody? Is anybody looking for him?

Where is he?

Barnaby stumbles around the corner of a grocery store, his knees buckling in exhaustion as he jumps the curb and weaves his way between people who hardly spare a glance at him, all busy getting out umbrellas or talking on their phones. The whole world seems washed out in black and white—Barnaby’s vision spins and his ears ring for a single bright, blinding moment. Why is he running? Where is he?

He bumps into a woman holding a bag, stumbling again in the aftershock of the sudden wave of dizziness. She gapes at him and yells something that sounds like white noise. Barnaby tries to open his mouth to apologize but his breath has stuck to the back of his throat, trapping the words somewhere inside his chest, and his whole body is burning, burning, burning—

“—hey!”

Barnaby looks up. The woman is gone, but someone else is standing in front of him instead, someone whose eyes hold the same spark of panic that Barnaby feels all at once anew. He makes a move to start running again but the person reaches out and grabs his wrist before he can jerk away.

“Hey, did you hear me?” the person asks. He is a boy, older and taller than Barnaby, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans and tennis shoes that are already soaked from the rain. His grip is firm but gentle, too, like the frown on his dark face. “I asked you if you’re okay. Are you?”

Barnaby feels like an animal cornered. He feels small, and confused, and afraid. He needs to get away—from the boy, from here, from—

“Can you understand me?” The boy crouches a little bit and brings his other hand up to the edge of Barnaby’s chin, and Barnaby is seized by a carnal instinct to lash out, to shrink from the touch. The flinch that shakes him runs cold through his entire body.

“Stop,” he wheezes.

The boy withdraws his hand immediately. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just, your nose is bleeding. And your leg. Did you fall? Are you lost?”

Barnaby wracks his brain for an explanation and comes up empty. The only thing he can think of is that he must have tripped while he was running, and not have noticed. He barely even feels it now. The ache is drowned out by the overwhelming roar of terror that rises up in the back of his head. His arm trembles where the boy still holds onto him. “I’m,” Barnaby begins, his voice tight and shaky. “Lost. I’m lost.”

“Okay. Were you with anyone before?”

Barnaby tries to remember. He remembers eating breakfast this morning with Uncle Maverick, and Samantha taking him to school, and how the clouds in the sky had looked like great billows of smoke crawling from the horizon. He remembers smoke…fire, fire…he remembers the intense rush of fear that drove him far away…he remembers the twisted corpse of his father beneath the Christmas tree, he remembers eating breakfast this morning with Uncle Maverick, he…he remembers…

“—do you live nearby? Is there someone I can call for you—your parents, maybe—?”

Barnaby remembers. His parents; their killer, the man with the face made of fire. The man with the tattoo on his hand. That wave of fear comes again, like it will wash Barnaby out to sea. “Don’t,” he says hurriedly, “don’t call. It’s not safe.”

The boy looks confused. He slides his teeth over his bottom lip and furrows his brow, and Barnaby feels the boy’s fingers flex anxiously against his wrist. “Okay,” he says, slow and drawn out as he turns the words over in his mind. “There’s…a police station a few blocks away, I can—“

Barnaby shakes his head. Something is telling him not to go to the police, to run and hide instead, to erase his own existence from the face of the earth so nobody can find him. _Somebody is trying to find him._ “It’s not safe,” Barnaby repeats. “Someone…there’s someone…” He thinks of the man with the gun and the tattoo and the flames that halo his blurry face. He thinks of the man who hurt his parents, who was going to hurt him, too.

A flash of understanding crosses the boy’s expression before it melts into something softer. His hand slides down Barnaby’s wrist to take ahold of his hand, and he smiles gently through the rain in his eyes. “Come with me,” he says. “Let me take you somewhere that _is_ safe, okay?”

Barnaby feels himself move like lead, like the boy’s hand is the only thing keeping him from tumbling forward and into the sea of static that makes his head unbearably heavy. He closes his eyes. The boy leads him up the road, his voice a beacon, his fingers a weight in Barnaby’s palm; a shepherd in the storm. 

 

 

2

The little boy shivers in the doorway of Kotetsu’s house, his hair dripping a puddle onto the floor and his green eyes glassy as he stares down at the tiles. Kotetsu’s mother pulls her son aside with a hard crease at the corners of her mouth. 

“I told you,” Kotetsu says, once they’re a good distance away, “I ran into him on the street. He looked lost, and confused, like he didn’t know where he was. And I think that he thinks there’s someone after him.”

“You did say he answered your questions, right?”

Kotetsu nods.

His mother straightens back up to her full height and sighs. “Alright,” she says at last. “Go get him some dry clothes. I’m going to see if I can’t get him to do any more explaining.”

Kotetsu races up to his bedroom in a jittery rush of adrenaline. He wonders what the little boy is so afraid of, while he rummages through his dresser in search of a spare T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. This entire situation makes his head spin. There was so much fear in his eyes, in the tremble of his small hands. Maybe he really is in danger from something.

Kotetsu returns with the clothes in his arms and sees his mother seated at the table across from the little boy. The boy is still shivering and gazing distractedly at the floor, and every once in a while he opens his mouth like he might speak, then falls back into silence.

“Anything?” Kotetsu asks.

His mother spares him a sharp look before turning back to the boy. “Can you hear me, sweetheart?” she asks. She’s talking in the soothing, motherly voice Kotetsu only remembers her using when he was younger or very upset. “Can you at least tell me your name?”

The boy does not say anything. His upper lip quivers and he looks like he’s trying to shrink in on himself and disappear, and the longer he stares at the floor the more distant he seems.

Kotetsu’s mother heaves another sigh and gets to her feet, smoothing down the front of her skirt. “Well, I’ll make him some tea,” she says, “and you too, Kotetsu. You must be soaked down to the bone. It won’t be long—go on and get him into those warm clothes.”

Kotetsu looks at the motionless child hunched at the table. “Come on,” he says, attempting to sound gentle. “I have some clothes for you. You’re probably cold.”

The boy is silent. He only seems to register Kotetsu’s existence once he’s being carefully urged to stand, one of Kotetsu’s arms around his shoulders, and he gives a little jolt at the contact. His footsteps are uneven and tired. Kotetsu is reminded of the injury on the boy’s knee as he helps him mount the final step of the staircase, feeling that little body nearly collapse beside him even with a hand holding him up.

“There, that wasn’t so hard,” Kotetsu says once they’ve finally reached his room. “Don’t worry. You can sit on my bed.” He finds the first-aid kit buried somewhere in his underwear drawer and digs out a couple of bandaids and a tube of disinfectant cream; out of the corner of his eye he sees the boy nervously pull himself up onto the mattress, his arms trembling, still dripping water onto the carpet with each jerky movement. Kotetsu doesn’t care about that. He kneels in front of the boy, doing his best to move as slowly as possible. 

The boy watches him wearily but hardly has the energy to object as Kotetsu gently applies the ointment to his knee and puts a bandaid over the cut. He puts another one over a particularly nasty scrape on the underside of his chin, too.

“That’s better,” Kotetsu declares when he’s finished, smiling wide. The boy is as quiet as ever. Kotetsu isn’t used to silence; he always feels like he has to fill it somehow, like it’s his job to find some way to alleviate the tension. Right now he feels entirely out of his element, crouching in front of a scared, wordless kid. He stands up and places the spare shirt and pants into the boy’s lap. “Here,” he says, “change into these. Sorry if they’re a little big. I’m gonna change into dry clothes, too, so I won’t look. Or you could do it in the bathroom if you want.”

Kotetsu watches the boy give a little shrug and turn away, leaning down to untie his shoes, and Kotetsu averts his gaze and slips into a T-shirt and jeans as quickly as he possibly can. He can hear the rustle of the boy’s clothes behind him as he changes. When it’s completely quiet again, Kotetsu turns back around. 

The boy can’t be much younger than Kotetsu himself, but suddenly he looks so small, drowning in a T-shirt and a big pair of sweatpants, his curly wet hair plastered to his forehead. He’s sitting on the bed, staring at his lap, and Kotetsu takes a moment to look at the boy—really look at him.

He is thin in his limbs but his face is round, a little flushed high on his cheeks and dark beneath his eyes, the way Kotetsu sees his own reflection when he’s really sick. The boy sure shivers like he’s sick, or at least still cold. There’s a small pinch of worry wrinkling the bridge of his nose that for some reason reminds Kotetsu of a rabbit.

“Bunny,” he says aloud.

The boy glances up, confused. 

“You—uh,” Kotetsu continues, reaching for the words to explain himself, “your nose. It does this thing, that—it gets all scrunched up, and it kinda looks like a bunny.”

The boy stares at him for a little bit. Just when Kotetsu is about to suggest that they go back downstairs, all rabbit-references hopefully forgotten, the boy clears his throat softly, and speaks. “Barnaby,” he says.

Kotetsu blinks. “Huh?”

“My name,” murmurs the boy. “It’s Barnaby.”

Kotetsu is so stunned that the boy finally said something again that he almost forgets to respond. The boy—Barnaby—is just staring at him with those big, glassy eyes. “Oh, uh, I’m Kotetsu,” he answers at last. “Kotetsu Kaburagi.”

Barnaby nods. Now that he’s spoken, Kotetsu wants to push him a bit for more information—like his last name, or his age, or at least where he’s from—but he stops to take another look at the exhausted kid and decides that all those questions can definitely wait. Right now, what Barnaby really seems like he needs is a big cup of tea. 

 

 

3

Barnaby doesn’t like fire, but he likes heat. He likes the way it sticks to his skin, the way it sometimes reminds him of his parents’ arms around him when he was younger, so close and real in his memories that he feels dizzy. He remembers being high up on his father’s shoulders while his mother laughed like a breeze in the bright summer air. He remembers chasing fireflies across the yard behind his house; once he caught one in his tiny hands and cupped it gently so he could show it to his mother, who was sitting up on the porch. It glowed between his fingers, and his mother had smiled and placed her fingers over his own, and the two of them had stared at the little creature, so full of light. Barnaby remembers thinking he held a tiny sunrise in his palms: something that could ward off the edge of darkness that crept in with the evening. That night had been one of the warmest of the year. The last year he ever spent with his parents.

Now, Barnaby sits curled up in a bathtub, in a house that is unfamiliar to him, trying to push the chill from his bones. The water had been hot twenty minutes ago, but now it is uncomfortably lukewarm. Barnaby still cannot force himself to get out. He is afraid that once he leaves the tub he will be cold again, and he thinks of the water wrapping its strong arms around him like his parents used to, and dragging him beneath the surface to drown him in the last shred of warmth. 

He isn’t entirely sure when he finally pulls himself out and gets dressed into the clothes the boy had given to him earlier. He said his name was Kotetsu, hadn’t he? Barnaby hopes that this is correct as he makes his way back down the hallway and into the boy’s room, still feeling strangely detached, like he’s looking at himself from very high up above. 

Kotetsu is busy setting up a mattress on the floor at the foot of the bed, and pauses to give Barnaby a welcoming smile when he enters the room. “Feeling better?” he asks. “That was a pretty long bath—not that that’s a bad thing. When I was younger I took the longest baths in the world, because I was always pretending I was a pirate. One time, my mom had to come in and drag me out before I used up all the hot water in the house!” Kotetsu laughs a little bit to himself at the memory.

Barnaby wonders if this story was meant to be comforting. Unable to think of anything to say in response, he simply shrugs and fiddles with the hem of his borrowed T-shirt. Kotetsu places some pillows on the mattress, preoccupied for a moment by organizing them into the position he likes best, and Barnaby watches his hands move and thinks of Samantha, with her warm eyes and wrinkled smile and soft palms cupping his face, telling him how sweet and wonderful and loved he is. Barnaby doesn’t feel any of those things now. He just feels lost, and scared, and very, very confused.

Maybe Kotetsu notices this in Barnaby’s expression, because he flops down on the mattress and gives another laugh that is probably meant to reassure him. “Man, I’m exhausted,” he says. “You probably are too. You can use my bed tonight, I don’t mind sleeping here. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Barnaby manages a small nod before carefully climbing onto Kotetsu’s bed and burrowing himself beneath the sheets. Kotetsu gets up to turn the lamp on his dresser off, and suddenly the room is submerged in darkness, silent except for the sound of Kotetsu shuffling back to the mattress on the floor with a yawn. Barnaby pulls the covers up to his chin and closes his eyes.

“Goodnight, Barnaby,” Kotetsu whispers.

Barnaby doesn’t want to be rude. He thinks of Samantha again and how she would chide him for not responding, so he takes a breath and mumbles, “Goodnight, Ko…Kotetsu.”

There is nothing after that. Kotetsu must have fallen asleep already. Barnaby presses his face into the soft pillow, inhaling the smell of laundry detergent and the same odd thing that Kotetsu’s clothes smell like; like traveling far into a forest, somewhere deep and dark and quiet, somewhere safe and still. It is hard to describe the feeling it gives him. Barnaby pictures this forest as he drifts off, pictures himself miles and miles from the rest of the world. Dark and quiet. Safe and still.

 

 

_Barnaby dreams._

_He is standing at the edge of a vast body of water that stretches out indefinitely on all sides and seems to melt into the darkness around him. There is no moon, no stars, no tiny glimmer of light at all—only this hungry void, and the black water lapping up around his ankles. When it touches his skin it feels like ice. Barnaby stumbles backward to escape it, feeling it seep in through his socks as the tide slowly rises, the rhythm of the water thrumming in his ears like a heartbeat. For a moment he thinks the strange black ocean is simply going to swallow him up; Barnaby wants to move but the water follows his footsteps, governed by his fear the way the sea is governed by the moon._

_When he finally gathers the courage to look down he sees that his legs have disappeared beneath the waves. Not even his reflection can survive in this heavy a darkness. Panic crawls up his throat now, as the situation sets in, as he realizes that he’s going to drown in this cold water alone._ Is this what death is like? _he thinks._ Is this what my mother felt? My father? Did they suffer like this, too?

_Barnaby squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to see the rising tide, the endless surge of darkness, his own body devoured limb by limb. The water whispers to him in a voice that sounds distantly familiar._

**_That’s it, Barnaby,_** _it says._ ** _Close your eyes. It’s time to sleep, now. It’s time to sleep._**

_The water is at his neck. His arms give a final jerk of terror, trying to get him back to the shore, but there is no land visible anymore. There is only the swell of the dark ocean around him and that soft, low voice._

**_Are you dreaming, Barnaby?_** _it says._ ** _Are you dreaming?_**

_Barnaby sucks in a deep breath. If he tilts his head back far enough he thinks he might be able to see a single star, flickering in and out of existence, like the firefly in his palm on that warm summer night. The light between his fingers. His mother’s smile._

_The water crests against his chin._

**_Close your eyes, you beautiful boy. Close your eyes._**

 

 

Barnaby jolts awake with a strangled gasp, the air stuttering in his chest as he tries to breathe. It is dark, so dark—he can feel cold sweat on his face and the back of his neck, and there are sheets twisted around his legs, trapping him, holding him down just like the water had. His lungs feel heavy; he puts his trembling hands atop his ribcage and presses into it, like maybe this will ease the pressure, or at least make him stop hurting somehow. It doesn’t do anything.

“Ugh,” someone mumbles groggily. 

Barnaby cannot remember where he is. There is somebody here with him, he thinks—a stranger with warm eyes, smooth hands. He cannot remember their name. He opens his mouth to ask, to call for help, but the only thing that comes out is a warbled, shaky sob.

“Hello?” the stranger says.

Barnaby hears the rustle of sheets and the thud of feet on the carpeted floor. The stranger is a shape that moves through the dark, slow and serpentine, searching for something. Barnaby thinks of the black water slinking up around his legs to pull him under. When the room is suddenly flooded with light he shrinks away from it, led by some instinctive fear that he cannot explain. Nothing seems entirely real right now.

“Hey—hey, are you okay?” The stranger kneels next to Barnaby beside the bed, his voice rough with sleep. There is something else in his tone, too—concern, the intensity of which would make Barnaby uncomfortable were he able to feel anything other than the suffocating panic leftover from his dream.

Barnaby wishes he could respond. The words are stuck in his throat, and his mouth is moving but he can’t seem to stop crying; if only he could just pull enough air into his lungs to—

“—Barnaby, hey, _breathe,_ ” the stranger urges. His eyes are clearer now, wrenched fully into wakefulness by the desperate wheezes that Barnaby keeps making. “Do you have asthma?” he asks. “Should I call an ambulance?”

Barnaby somehow manages to shake his head. He’s had nightmares like this before, but they’ve almost all been of his parents: their corpses burnt beneath the rubble of his house, or the vacant, unblinking stare of his mother, her chest soaked in blood. The dark ocean and whispered voice is new. He isn’t sure what to make of it. 

The stranger waits patiently by the side of the bed, on his knees in silence as Barnaby gradually remembers how to breathe and think and speak. This last part is especially difficult, but the stranger shows no signs of trying to rush him. In the dim glow of the lamp his eyes look like honey.

“I…I have dreams,” Barnaby stammers at last. His voice is a low, raw exhalation. “They’re…bad. They feel real, sometimes. Sometimes I wake up and it’s like…” He stops. His throat closes up for a brief moment, like there’s something trying to keep him from saying any more. He fights through it anyway. “I don’t know. I’m scared, and I don’t know why.”

The stranger is watching him, careful and quiet. The crease between his eyebrows is the only thing that gives away his confusion. “I get nightmares sometimes, too,” he says. “They can really freak me out. It’s normal to be bothered by them.”

Barnaby shakes his head. He wants to tell the stranger that it’s not like that, that the fear he feels is so much more intense, that it’s like someone has the barrel of a gun between his eyes, ready to kill him the way they killed his parents. Even if he could explain it, he isn’t sure the stranger will understand. He’s only told Uncle Maverick about his nightmares a few times, partly because it was his guardian whose face he woke to see in the middle of the night for weeks after the death of his parents. Uncle Maverick had cradled Barnaby close to his chest and let him cry himself back into an exhausted stupor, and while Barnaby did eventually describe the things that haunted his sleep, he did not attempt to describe the nauseating dread that came when he woke up. After all, he was safe with Uncle Maverick. There was really no excuse for a fear that strong. 

Barnaby remembers the panicked warning in the back of his head that he had heard earlier. Somebody is trying to find him—that’s why he ran away, why he’s so far from home. That’s why he can’t go back. He can’t recall how he ended up lost in the streets of an unfamiliar town, but he can at least remember this. 

“Sorry,” the stranger says. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. I was just, you know, trying to let you know that I can relate. Maybe I can’t.” He fixes Barnaby with that intense golden gaze. The light flickers across his face, casting part of it in shadow, the rest soft and warm. “I don’t know why you’re afraid. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. But…for what it’s worth, I’m here. I’ll make sure nothing hurts you, okay? Whatever it is that you’re scared of, it can’t get you here. It can’t get you.”

Barnaby’s eyes are wet again, and he shuts them tight for a second so he doesn’t start to cry. He knows that the stranger can’t protect him from something that neither of them can even put a name to, but he sounds so sure that Barnaby wants to believe him, if only to ease his own fear. “Th…thank you,” he whispers. 

The stranger sits back on his heels, giving Barnaby a smile, and it’s in that moment that Barnaby remembers his name. _Kotetsu._ Kotetsu who had hid him from the man with the burning face; Kotetsu who had used his gentle hands to put a bandaid on Barnaby’s chin; Kotetsu who is showing him kindness now, even though he doesn’t have to anything at all. “It’s no problem,” Kotetsu says. “I can stay here for a while, if you want. Until you fall back asleep.”

Barnaby’s chest hurts, the same way it does when he thinks about his father lifting him up into the air or his mother spinning him around in her arms. A good hurt, a sad hurt. The hurt of someone caring about him. Barnaby is too tired to answer, instead using the last of his energy to wrap the sheets around his shoulders and letting his eyes fall closed. When he drifts off this time he can almost imagine that it is his mother who kneels beside his bed, her eyes warm like Kotetsu’s, her face full of color and life, her shirt unstained. 

 

 

4

“Are you sure there isn’t something we should do?” Kotetsu’s mother asks. “He didn’t give you any information? Nothing?”

Kotetsu sighs. He’s leaning against the doorway leading into the kitchen, where their mysterious guest is silently eating a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. “He only told me that his name is Barnaby. He still doesn’t want to go to the police or contact anyone, and he still thinks there’s someone looking for him.”

“Is there?”

“I don’t know.” Kotetsu shrugs his shoulders, thinking back to last night and the nightmare the poor kid had woken up from. “Maybe. If there is he doesn’t want to be found, that’s for sure.”

Kotetsu’s mother runs a hand through her hair and puts the other one on her hip. She seems to mull over this information for a bit before turning her gaze up to the ceiling with a huff of exasperation. “I feel like I should be taking some sort of action,” she says. “It doesn’t sit right with me, just…waiting around like this.” She sighs again. “Do you remember that one time you got into a fight with your brother and ran away after school? And you hid in the neighbor’s bushes for almost the whole afternoon until I finally found you?”

Kotetsu isn’t a big fan of this memory. He had been young, of course, and a lot more immature, but it was still a stupid thing to do. The anger and worry on his mother’s face isn’t something he is going to easily forget. “Yeah,” he says. “Muramasa broke one of my favorite action figures. I cried all the way to the bus stop.” Kotetsu pauses and compares his own childish anger back then to the unbridled terror he had seen in Barnaby’s eyes, shivering on the street in the cold rain. “Something tells me this isn’t like that.”

Kotetsu’s mother closes her eyes. “I know,” she says. “Me too. Look, just…go talk to him, okay? He still hasn’t said a single word to me. I’m starting to think that the two of you are communicating telepathically.”

Kotetsu cracks a smile, glad for a break in the heavy conversation. His mother turns away to head up the stairs, making a shooing gesture with her hands as she goes, and Kotetsu fights the huge to pull a funny face before she can scold him about it. 

Barnaby has already finished his breakfast and is in the middle of a very intense staring competition with the wood grain of the table when Kotetsu walks into the kitchen. In the fresh light of day he can see a dusting of freckles across the kid’s face, along with that little wrinkle in his nose that he noticed last night.

“You’re doing it again,” Kotetsu says, and Barnaby jolts in his chair, hitting his elbow on the table’s edge. Kotetsu gives a sympathetic wince. “Ouch, sorry.”

Barnaby brings his injured arm up to his chest like a broken wing. He doesn’t do anything else to acknowledge that he’s been hurt, however, which Kotetsu decides to take as a good sign.

“Come with me,” he says, holding out his hand to the boy. “I have an idea. You’ll be okay, I promise.”

Barnaby regards Kotetsu with cautious eyes. It takes several minutes of unsure silence, but eventually he nods, letting Kotetsu grip his hand and lead him outside into the yard.

The garden always looks the prettiest right in the window of time between late morning and early afternoon. The sunlight falls on the flowers just right, and the grass is green and still glittering with dew. Kotetsu takes Barnaby out to the cabbage patch; they have to weave in between rows of other vegetables, taking care not to step on any of the budding plants. Barnaby seems to be naturally graceful, so it’s easy for him to avoid them, moving like he’s had lots of practice being nimble before. Kotetsu wishes he wasn't so flat-footed—his mother used to tell him that he did more damage to their garden just playing around than the deer did when they were hungry.

Kotetsu drops to his belly in the grass and shimmies forward a little bit so he can get a good view of the cabbages. When he looks back Barnaby is shuffling towards him, dragging himself along the earth with his cheeks puffed out in effort. Kotetsu chokes back a snort of laughter. “Look, look,” he whispers once Barnaby is beside him.

Barnaby does. Half-hidden among the cabbages is a rabbit, small and brown, with big black eyes and a while stomach. Its whiskers twitch as it glances around.

“There’s a little family of them living in the woods,” Kotetsu explains under his breath. “They come here to eat the cabbages. We’ve tried to get rid of them, but they keep coming back. I don’t mind though. They’re pretty cute.” He looks over at Barnaby. The kid is staring, dazed, an unreadable expression on his face. The scrunch of his nose is more apparent than ever. “See?” says Kotetsu. “Like looking into a mirror.”

Barnaby blinks so slowly that Kotetsu starts to wonder if he fell asleep. The afternoon sun catches the flutter of his long eyelashes against his cheeks, the bruise-colored circles beneath his eyes, the tremble of his upper lip. “A mirror,” he repeats quietly.

Kotetsu looks back at the rabbit. It has its nose wrinkled up now, too. “Yeah. You know, I think everyone underestimates rabbits. My brother says he could catch one if he really wanted to, but I think they’re way too smart. In the wild, everything is out to get them. They’ve had to adapt so they can survive. They’ve gotten faster, better at hearing, quicker at sensing danger. It’s gonna take a lot more than my brother with some dumb net to take one down.”

Barnaby turns his owlish gaze on Kotetsu. There’s something hopeful, maybe, in his eyes. Just a few feet away, the rabbit takes a leaf of cabbage between its teeth and begins to chew. “Really?” Barnaby whispers.

Kotetsu smiles. The grass tickles his chin when a breeze rolls through, but he’s too comfortable to move, content to simply lie still for a while. “Yeah,” he answers. “Kinda like you. Bunny.”

 


End file.
